George Korper - March 26, 2007

Family

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How many siblings did you have?

I had one sister.

And aunts, uncles, first cousins?

Uh, I had, I had three uncles and three aunts. I had about uh, nine or ten first cousins and then we had second cousins--in other words, let's say a cousin of my mother's. And, that's about half a dozen who were very close to us who invited to our house for the high holidays and things like that.

So, your extended family included how much?

Fifty, I'd say.

How many survived?

How many survived? Uh, uh, including myself? Two, two second cousins--seven, eight, eight, eight out of fifty.

And your sister? Did you survive?

Yes, yes, yes.

Your parents?

No, no. In fact, there are six of my best friends at the hostel--there were six of us from Czechoslovakia who stayed very good friends today. Two, unfortunately, died over the years. Just one of them just last--a few weeks ago in London. Uh, not a single parent of those six boys survived. And, I met a lot of Czech Jews in the Air Force. I probably know twenty and of the twenty after the war--I knew, I knew these people while we were together and then after the war it took three months to get demobilized so I knew what was happening there in their families. Uh, I don't think there were three, four parents. One, one's mother came back. Usually, they were men. The women who were saved, who were--when, when they came to, to, to Auschwitz and who had kids and who were no more than forty-years-old, maybe a little less, but under, under, under forty, who were fit. They were sent for, for labor. And their labor was a question of luck. If the woman was forced--however fit she was, she was unfortunate and got, got the wrong place, wrong camp, the labor was too hard, there was not enough food, couldn't survive. The ones who were fortunate and, and had enough food or found a way to get the next piece of bread a day and so, so they survived. So, in this, in this group, I think there was three, three women and two men. Two fathers and three mothers of twenty--out of forty people.